Related

This is the first of six profiles on recipients of the 2013 Courage to Come Back Awards, presented by Coast Mental Health to six outstanding people who have overcome great obstacles only to give back to their communities. Their inspiring comebacks will be celebrated at a gala dinner at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre on April 25.

After getting clean but before he got a criminal record pardon, he was virtually unemployable.

“It took me 14 years to get a job,” said Joe, who overcame abuse as a child and a violent criminal past to win the 2013 Courage to Come Back Award in the social adversity category.

“I started taking courses [called] healthy relationships and alternatives to violence. I became a D and A [drug and alcohol] counsellor. I just kept taking what [courses] I could,” he said in his East Vancouver apartment that doubles as a studio for his native beading and jewelry making and which he shares with a teen daughter.

Years ago, “I was [almost] hired by the Surrey school division,” said Joe. “But then HR [Human Resources] said, ‘This is the worst record we’ve ever seen.’ They said they couldn’t hire me. But they said, we applaud you for trying. Keep trying.”

To make his life more challenging, Joe, 53, who’s over six feet tall with muscular tatooed arms and a long knifing scar on his forehead, one of his 25 stab wounds, became an instant full-time dad in his mid-30s when his twin 11-year-old girls came to live with him.

“These girls raised me for six years,” said Joe with an easy laugh. “I’m not kidding. I said to them, ‘Do I have to feed you or do you feed yourselves? They said, ‘No, you have to feed us.’”

He was fresh out of treatment for his heroin addiction, his fifth and final attempt, and had been living in a recovery house, “learning how to behave and how not to behave by watching people,” he said.

“I realized I couldn’t rob anyone anymore. It (recovery) kind of wrecked it for me.”

He and the twins still needed to eat.

“I was on welfare and it was so humiliating and I was so broken,” he said. “I went to the food bank, the Christmas bureau. I just stood in every line I could find.”

Joe, whose native mother grew up in residential schools and whose father he met only once, had no template for family life.

He was taken into custody in 1968 by Children’s Aid when he was seven years old after the house he was living in was raided for drugs and spent the next five years in a foster home with a “brutal” couple who lived on a farm.

He slept in a basement dugout, did nothing but farm chores, was regularly beaten and was denied meat if he didn’t properly feed the animals.

“There’s nothing good I could say about that time,” he said without bitterness.

He first tried heroin at age 11 and ended up on the street at age 12, going in and out of group homes and schools, “getting high, sleeping wherever and surviving however I could.”

He did break and enters to get money for hotel rooms and heroin, got involved with gangs and “lived a constant life of crime.”

“Then it became more violent and there was a lot of fighting. It was so wild and so aggressive and I was so angry and pissed off and resentful.”

The arrival of cocaine in the 1980s made Joe’s life worse.

“Once I started doing that, I pretty much became an idiot, out of control. I lost all my morals.”

He said among criminals normally there’s an unwritten code, which included you don’t rob your friends, for instance.

“When you start doing coke, that goes out the window,” said Joe. “I just went haywire. I wasn’t trustrworthy. Thank God I was so out there that I would get arrested. Rescued.”

His epiphany came during his last jail term when he saw a 53-year-old among the 18 year olds, looking for drugs, and thought, “Wow, that could be me 20 years from now.”

He started going on the powwow trail, competing in dance competitions across the Prairies, a trip he still makes every summer, wearing outfits he designs and beads himself, and he taught dancing.

Waiting for his pardon, he took a course to become a life skills coach and became artist-in-residence at a Gastown gallery before he got work as a youth worker on a Saskatchewan reserve for a few years.

He’s now got a permanent full-time job as the child and youth worker for the Delta school district, where he can identify and relate to troubled kids and act as mentor.

Principals and students praised his work in letters recommending him for the award, including how he worked at one Delta elementary school with a group of at-risk boys who were “extremely disengaged,” showing signs of drug use and aggression.

With Joe’s help, they became carving tutors for the school, a transformation that was so complete that visitors who came to the unveiling of the carving the boys helped with asked if the boys were part of a special leadership team.

“It is exciting to watch Mr. Miller instill pride and self-respect in these boys,” wrote Chalmers elementary school principal Ken Levenstein.

Joe also has taken high school students on field trips to the Downtown Eastside, said Burnsview secondary school principal Carla Rizzardo.

She said the way Joe connects with students is impressive.

Burnsview Grade 12 student Hadeel Alameer, one of more than a dozen students who wrote reference letters, wrote that Joe is more than a teacher because he takes time to listen to students’ problems and share his own experiences with them.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.